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Mary
Mussman
Department
of Comparative Literature
University
of California Berkeley
4125
Dwinelle Hall
To the Executive Board and the Joint Council
of UAW 2865,
We the undersigned, as members in good
standing of UAW Local 2865 (“Local Union”), write to appeal the contract
ratification vote that took place in August 2018. The contract ratification
vote violated union by-laws and did not follow both legally binding union
procedures as well as customary voting procedures. Accordingly, through this
appeal, we seek the invalidation of the contract ratification vote because it
violates Local Union Bylaws and circumvented democratic procedures and
assurances that are followed during elections that ensure all members a
reasonable and equal opportunity to participate to vote.
We
appeal the procedural legitimacy of the ratification vote which happened
through a fundamentally undemocratic process and in violation of union bylaws
on the following grounds:
CHARGES
1. The
initiation of the ratification vote violated the Bargaining Team’s rules and
procedures, and thus constituted an improper ratification procedure.
We appeal the initiation of the contract
ratification vote because the Bargaining Team failed to meet the number of
votes required to send out the ratification vote to members. According to
the “Community Agreements For Bargaining
Team Internal Dynamics and Decisionmaking” document signed by all Bargaining
Team members, in order to “vot[e] on presenting a final contract to members for
ratification” the Bargaining Team must have “a majority [of] 50%+1 votes (10
votes)”. The Bargaining Team did not reach a voting majority as the final count
was eight in favor of ratification, seven opposed, and one abstaining, and
hence did not meet the required 50%+1 majority. Therefore the Bargaining Team
violated the “Community Agreements” in sending out the ratification vote to
membership, thus preemptively invalidating the results of the subsequent
ratification vote. Furthermore, the failure of the Bargaining Team to reach a
majority, also invalidates any claim that union support of ratification, or a
“yes” vote on ratification, constituted the union’s “official position.”
2. The Executive Board, many of whom were
actively campaigning for the ‘yes’ vote, also took over elections
responsibilities following the resignation of EC officers, in direct violation
of the bylaws. In particular, the Local Union leadership lacked the authorization
to send the ratification vote email without the Election Committee's approval.[1]
The
email titled “Vote Now: Contract Ratification,” containing
a link to the personalized online ballot for the ratification vote, was sent to
members on or around August 20, 2018. This email’s content was heavily biased
in favor of the YES position, including a lengthy list of what we “won” in the
Tentative Agreement along with speculated negative consequences of not voting
for this position; the NO position was only briefly mentioned at the end of the
email, and its arguments were not listed on the email itself but on a separate
google document that was linked from the email. The NO side received decidedly
unequal treatment in this email that the vast majority of voting members (who
voted online) saw before casting a vote. (see Appendix A).
This email was not approved by the Elections Committee,
which is in explicit violation of the
Article 13, Section 1 of the Local Bylaws[2] [3] that stipulates that “All Local
Union elections, strike votes, and contract ratification votes shall be held
under the supervision of a democratically elected election committee. The
election committee shall be responsible for the publication of notice for
nominations and elections, the verification of eligibility for candidates, the
organization and supervision of election proceedings, and the counting of
ballots.”
The
Executive Board of the Local Union admitted, in its email to the Local Joint
Council on September 14, 2018, that “Due to a large number of resignations on
the Elections Committee, this time, the
eboard voted on the time/place/manner of the ratification vote and helped to
identify individuals to staff the in-person polls”. The Executive Board’s claim
that “while a ratification vote is not an election, the Elections Committee has
traditionally facilitated this vote” in the same email is misleading because
aforementioned bylaws clearly stipulate that a ratification vote, like all
other Local Union elections, must be supervised by the Elections Committee.
3.
Union leadership violated democratic integrity of the election by directing
paid staff to campaign for a “yes” vote.
Paid union organizers were assigned to
campaign for the “yes” vote on the orders of some members of the union
leadership. Staff contact members used their paid work hours to text and
phone-bank members to convince them to vote “yes” on the contract ratification
vote. The use of union
membership resources to influence the results of this vote violates the
democratic nature of the vote, and thus tainted a ratification vote according
to the procedures set by the Local Union.
The
Executive Board, in its email to the Joint Council on September 13, 2018,
admitted to using staff and union resources to campaign for a “yes” vote. The email by the Executive Board stated, “As
the body in charge of directing staff, some of us instructed the field staff to
inform members of the position that the majority of the bargaining team and
members who participated in the statewide straw poll supported. The process for
this allocation began during our regular field staff call (the calls open to
the personnel committee and the organizing field staff) where we started a
discussion on how to get staff to raise awareness and contact members about
ratification vote. Specific logistical
instruction was given on follow-up calls after the bargaining team had voted to
put the contract to ratification.”
Kavitha Iyengar, Northern Vice President, also
admitted in an email to the Executive Board, Joint Council, and Anti-Oppression
Committee, on August 23, 2018 that “members of the executive board had calls
with staff to plan GOTV plans for the ratification vote and directed our field
staff to tell members about the bargaining team's majority position, the
official union position. We had directed staff resources toward getting out the
vote for this ratification campaign through phone banking, text-banking, and
walkthroughs... The raps included the message that voting yes is the majority
position of the union since the majority of the bargaining team [sic] supported
the tentative agreement.”
4. The
Executive Board interfered with operations of the NO campaign.
While the official resources of the union were
used to explicitly favor the YES side in the ratification vote, including
through mass texts, the Executive Board issued a directive to prevent the NO
campaign from using the same campaign strategy of mass texts. Kavitha Iyengar,
Northern Vice President, admitted the interference in an email to the Executive
Board, Joint Council, and Anti-Oppression Committee, on August 23, 2018, as she
stated “Our directive about ‘no’ outreach was that it could not be presented as the
official union position[4] ,
and that it could not be sent out via mass texting technologies.”
5. The timing and duration of the
vote did not allow union members sufficient opportunity to inform themselves
about contract details.
The timing and duration of the vote unduly
limited the extent to which union membership could inform themselves about the
details of the contract proposal, and also foreshortened any efforts to
consider alternatives to ratification—including, but not limited to, a strike.
The timeline of communication with union
membership about the final contract occurred as follows: union leadership sent
an initial straw poll that included the Tentative Agreement on August 13th.
This was the first time members were able to read the Tentative Agreement. The
members were also asked in this poll to
determine whether to move the contract proposal to a ratification vote Voting was kept open until noon on August
16th. With a small majority favoring the movement towards ratification in the
straw poll, the actual ratification vote took place between August 19th and
August 22nd.
For all but two UC campuses, both August votes
took place a full month prior to school being back in session. The timing of
the vote particularly infringed upon members on campuses on the quarter system,
whose fall quarter begins in late September. Nevertheless, even for the two UC
campuses that begin the fall semester in August, the initial straw poll and the
ratification vote took place only as graduate student workers were returning to
campus, and over the course of the hectic lead-up to the coming semester.
During this time, an extensive portion of the
broader union membership was not available to deliberate with peers over the
details of the contract. Further, there was no official union meeting to
discuss ratification on any of the nine campuses. Given that the email containing
the straw poll was the first instance in which most union members had heard
anything about the contract’s contents, and the possibility of it being put up
for a ratification vote, such conversations, if they occurred at all, were
likely minimal—as they had to happen over the extremely short, ten-day
turnaround between the initial email and the final day of ratification voting.
We also believe it was deeply undemocratic to
hold the ratification vote before many new graduates were on campus and able to
attend orientation where they would be given the opportunity to sign up for the
union and becoming voting members. As this contract will impact those new
graduate student-workers who will be employed for the next four years, it was
unfair not to allow them the chance to vote on it and against the egalitarian
spirit of our union.
We believe that a genuinely democratic vote
would only have been possible while students and workers were in session, and
thus both physically present and mentally engaged with the bargaining
processes, as to allow for a informed union membership. Exploiting the lack of worker presence on campuses
across the state in mid-August, the timing and duration of the vote implicitly
favored the “yes” vote by undercutting the momentum of possible organizing
efforts in the direction of further bargaining and/or a strike.The
timing moreover functioned to undermine efforts that concerned workers might
have taken to organize around those concerns.
UAW
Constitution Article 19, Section 3 states that “After negotiations have been
concluded with the employer, the proposed contract or supplement shall be
submitted to the vote of the Local Union membership, or unit membership in the
case of an Amalgamated Local Union, at a meeting called especially for such
purpose, or through such other procedure, approved by the Regional Director, to
encourage greater participation of members in voting on the proposed contract
or supplement.” This ratification vote was conducted in a manner contrary to
the UAW Constitution mandate for it to “encourage greater participation of
members”, since, as stated above, it took place in ways that minimized the
members’ possibility of participation.
6. Technical errors and a lack of
transparency created obstacles for workers to participate in the vote.
We
also would highlight both technical errors and a lack of transparency in
putting forth the pre-ratification straw poll and the actual ratification vote.
Both votes were sent in an email that large portions of the membership either
failed to receive or received only in spam folders in their email. This means
that some members may not have been aware that the ratification vote was
happening. Moreover, the means to remedy this situation and receive a new
ballot was unclear to many members.
Technical issues with how the straw poll was tethered to individual member
emails created a further lack of clarity over whether individual member votes
were really being counted in the vote itself.
Members
also reported issues with the secrecy of the ballot. The secrecy of the ballot
could not be assured by the online voting platform we used as it required
members to enter identifying personal information before casting the ballot,
thus allowing member’s votes to be linked to their identities. It was possible
that members did not feel completely free to cast the vote of their choosing
for fear of repercussions. By holding the vote before the academic year had
started at many campuses, left the majority of members without the potential to
vote in person using the secret ballot used in in-person voting.
Therefore,
as equal voting rights of all members were undermined, we contest the
legitimacy of the vote.
REMEDIES SOUGHT
We request:
- The
annulment of the contract that was ratified in August 2018.
- UAW
Local 2865 immediately notify the University of California of this pending
appeal, and provide it a copy of the appeal.
- UAW
Local 2865 immediately notify the University of California that the Local
does not consider the ratification complete until the appeal process is
complete, and that the new contract not be implemented until the
ratification process is completed correctly.
- Full
investigation into the ratification process, especially the legality of
the use of union resources to campaign for a “yes” vote, and the technical
problems with emailing members the straw poll and the ratification vote.
Sincerely,
Mary Mussman, Lead Appellant
Member, UAW 2865 (Department of Comparative
Literature, Berkeley)
4125 Dwinelle Hall
mary.mussman@berkeley.edu
Spencer Adams (Berkeley)
Erin Bennett (Berkeley)
Wendi Bootes (Berkeley)
Alex Brostoff (Berkeley)
Eleanor Cawthon (Berkeley)
Lindsay Choi (Berkeley)
Kathryn Crim (Berkeley)
Patrick Delehanty (Berkeley)
Beezer de Martelly (Berkeley)
Marlena Gittleman (Berkeley)
Matthew Gonzalez (Berkeley)
Connor Gorman (Davis)
Jordan Greenwald (Berkeley)
Veronica Hamilton (Santa Cruz)
Julia Havard (Berkeley)
Shannon Ikebe (Berkeley)
Adam Jadhav (Berkeley)
Colin Johnson (Davis)
Nicole Jones (Berkeley)
Marianne Kaletzky (Berkeley)
Dinah Lensing-Sharp (Berkeley)
Isaac Marck (Berkeley)
Ana McTaggart (Santa Cruz)
Marcelo Mendez (Santa Cruz)
Tara Phillips (Berkeley)
Chloe Piazza (Berkeley)
Kyle Ralston (Berkeley)
Sonya Rao (Los Angeles)
Michael Rawls (Davis)
Angus Reid (Berkeley)
Laila Riazi (Berkeley)
Brian Riley (Davis)
Betty Rosen (Berkeley)
Jocelyn Saidenberg (Berkeley)
Christopher Scott (Berkeley)
Joseph Serrano (Berkeley)
Phoenix Shetty (Davis)
Thomas Sliwowski (Berkeley)
Michael Song (Berkeley)
Simone Stirner (Berkeley)
Saniya Taher (Berkeley)
Jenny Tang (Berkeley)
Diana Thow (Berkeley)
Katharine Wallerstein (Berkeley)
Abigail Walsh (Santa Cruz)
Lawrence Wang (Berkeley)
Ellie White (Davis)
Duane Wright (Davis)
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